Scandia’s new city administrator, Neil Soltis, wants to reach out to residents.
In the two months since he started the job as Scandia’s city administrator, Neil Soltis has been working to discover what makes Scandia tick. Finding out the priorities, concerns and hopes of the city’s residents, he said, is a key ingredient in his and other city leaders’ attempts to manage the priorities of the city as a whole.
“Everybody has a different reason for being here,” he said, adding that he when he talks to residents, he asks them, “Why do you like Scandia?” He remarked that their answers inevitably lead to larger discussions about the city’s strengths and where it could improve.
“I didn’t want to come in with any preconceived notions about (the city’s future),” he said.
Soltis, who lives in Hudson, Wisconsin, with his wife, replaced previous administrator Kristina Handt, who resigned in late 2015 to focus on raising her newborn daughter. With a background working in finance for various companies and organizations, he came most recently from a four-year stint as finance director of Hudson. In his job before that, he spent almost a decade as the village administrator of Osceola, Wisconsin, where he frequently interacted with Scandia residents. The two cities are close enough that their work and leisure activities often overlap.
“Just through being there, you could build a number of relationships,” he said.
The previous connection was one of the reasons the Scandia job interested Soltis. Another reason was a chance to get back into city administration instead of the more specialized finance position he was in at Hudson.
“I missed … contact with the public, the diversity of work,” he said, he said, remarking that the duties allow him to dip into many areas of government. “It makes the job a lot of fun.”
Soltis likes to keep a relatively open office and wants to make himself available for conversations with residents, a connection he says gives him a more concrete feeling that he’s serving the public.
“Your ears are always open,” he said.
As Soltis has listened, he’s heard many different things from citizens, but one of the most frequent concerns is the oft-discussed dichotomy between Scandia’s rural heritage and a desire for economic progress. To Soltis, it seems like many people would prefer a balance.
“I think people like going through more farmland than it being a suburban development,” he said of the city at large. On the other side, he said, it seems that many would like more commerce and economic development in the city’s downtown.
There’s also a desire for increased local amenities, including broadband Internet access that could help more residents successfully telecommute. In a city like Scandia, Soltis said, companies weigh the benefits of bringing such amenities to town against the potential downsides. Some questions they have to ask, he said, are, “Can you (do it), and is it worth the effort and the cost to provide these services here?”
Soltis is seeking community input so he can perform his duties better on a day-to-day basis, he said, but also to gain insight into where residents want the city to go in the future. Scandia will be updating its five-year capital improvement plan soon, as well as the city’s comprehensive plan, which was created in 2008.
“(I want) to see if the community sentiment that drove that document will be the same,” Soltis said of the comprehensive plan.
Besides community input, Soltis is also focused on taking the “longer perspective” on city planning to realize cost savings over time, as well as executing the City Council’s vision. In Osceola, he engaged the council members in an exercise to uncover their perceptions about the town. He gave them each a disposable camera and asked them to take pictures of things in town they thought were the best or the worst the community had to offer – parks, commercial areas, town entrances and more. The resultant photos spurred conversations and got council members thinking in new ways about different aspects of their community, and he hopes to generate similar discussions with Scandia’s leaders and others who make the community their home.
Soltis encourages community interaction, and residents can call him at 651-433-2274.